Dow expects to meet Wednesday deadline

Published 9:00 pm, Monday, August 12, 2002

The Dow Chemical Co. is staring down a big deadline.

Wednesday is the last day for more than 900 of the country's largest companies to tell the Securities and Exchange Commission that their chief executive officers and chief financial officers personally certify the company's financial results. As companies file their statements they are posted at www.sec.gov/rules/extra.ceocfo.htm, with CEOs above and CFOs below in a separate list.

Dow didn't have the magic check marks yet this morning but it plans to.

"What we're doing is just going through the internal review process," said Cindy Newman, manager of financial communications. "We're fully confident that we're going to comply with the deadline."

The June 27 SEC order came about in response to multibillion-dollar cases of bankruptcy, accounting scandals and financial restatements in a number of global companies not related to Dow. The order requires CEOs and CFOs to personally attest to the accuracy of their most recent 10K, or annual report, and the 10Qs, or quarterly reports, issued since then, as well as the related press releases and proxy statements. Dow's are available through the SEC's EDGAR database and in the financial reports section of dow.com.

The corporate secretary's office set up the company's program of review, Newman said. The work has been mostly routine, she said, with the biggest obstacle being summer vacations. "It's just been a scheduling issue more than anything else," she said. "We're on a good path."